The Real Adventure eBook

“You won’t even give me the poor satisfaction
of knowing what you’re doing,” he said.

“I’d love to,” she said, “—­to
be able to write to you, hear from you every day.
But I don’t believe you want to know. I
think it would be too hard for you. Because you’d
have to promise not to try to get me back—­not
to come and rescue me if I got into trouble and things
went badly and I didn’t know where to turn.
Could you promise that, Roddy?”

He gave a groan and buried his face in his hands.
Then:

“No,” he said furiously. “Of
course I couldn’t. See you suffering and
stand by with my hands in my pockets and watch!”
He sprang up and seized her by the arms in a grip
that actually left bruises, and fairly shook her in
the agony of his entreaty. “Tell me it’s
a nightmare, Rose,” he said. “Tell
me it isn’t true. Wake me up out of it!”

But under the indomitable resolution of her blue eyes,
he turned away. This was the last appeal of that
sort that he made.

“I’ll promise,” she said presently,
“to be sensible—­not to take any risks
I don’t have to take. I’ll regard
my life and my health and all, as something I’m
keeping in trust for you. I’ll take plenty
of warm sensible clothes when I go; lots of shoes
and stockings—­things like that, and if
you’ll let me, I’ll—­I’ll
borrow a hundred dollars to start myself off with.
It isn’t a tragedy, Roddy,—­not that
part of it. You wouldn’t be afraid for
any one else as big and strong and healthy as I.”

Gradually, out of the welter of scenes like that,
the thing got itself recognized as something that
was to happen. But the parting came at last in
a little different way from any they had foreseen.

Rodney came home from his office early one afternoon,
with a telegram that summoned him to New York to a
conference of counsel in a big public utility case
he had been working on for months. He must leave,
if he were going at all, at five o’clock.
He ransacked the house, vainly at first, for Rose,
and found her at last in the trunk-room—­dusty,
disheveled, sobbing quietly over something she held
hugged in her arms. But she dried her eyes and
came over to him and asked what it was that had brought
him home so early.

He showed her the telegram. “I’ll
have to leave in an hour,” he said, “if
I’m to go.”

She paled at that, and sat down rather giddily on
a trunk. “You must go,” she said,
“of course. And—­Roddy, I guess
that’ll be the easiest way. I’ll
get my telegram to-night—­pretend to get
it—­from Portia. And you can give me
the hundred dollars, and then, when you come back,
I’ll be gone.”

The thing she had been holding in her hands slipped
to the floor. He stooped and picked it up—­stared
at it with a sort of half awakened recognition.

“I f—­found it,” she explained,
“among some old things Portia sent over when
she moved. Do you know what it is? It’s
one of the note-books that got wet—­that
first night when we were put off the street-car.
And—­and, Roddy, look!”